If pop really did eat itself some 20-odd years ago, then recent months have seen it spew up the contents of its stomach in lurid fashion. Rifle through buzzed-about tracks gracing tastemaker blogs and you'll hear a range of underground artists regurgitating the work of everyone from Michael Jackson to Lindsay Lohan via the Brat Pack films of the 80s.

How to Dress Well's "Ecstasy With Jojo" is a perfect example – a track that spins a hazy drug-comedown of a song from a wisp of Michael Jackson's "Baby Me Mine", some ghostly vocals and not a lot else. On first listen I was inclined to agree with one blog commentator who asked: "Gosh, is that all?" But repeated plays suggest that How to Dress Well (aka Tom Krell) is tapping into something intrinsically emotional here, blurring our memories of past pop culture (in this case the King of Pop and acid house) to create a heady brew of nostalgia (from hearing Jacko) and anxiety (the dreaded post-club return to reality).

The music of Kindness plays similar tricks with your mind. Check myspace.com/kindnesses and you'll find other-worldly covers of the Byrds, Neil Young and the Replacements, as well as a dislocated version of West Side Story's "Somewhere". The listening experience becomes rather like looking at a sun-bleached photo of the Mona Lisa. You recognise what it is – just about – but you're relying on memory, and all the emotions triggered by these memories, to piece together your own version of it.

Such behaviour isn't restricted to artists who deal solely in cover versions. Young English indie duo Summer Camp cite the influence of John Hughes movies such as Sixteen Candles on their aesthetic, sampling Molly Ringwald and populating their MySpace site with vintage images. "We're nostalgic for something we never actually experienced," they say. "The America we get homesick for is kind of all in our minds, pieced together from films, photos, and music."

It's confusing that footage appropriated for their video for recent single "Round the Moon" actually comes from a soft-toned Swedish film from 1970 (A Swedish Love Story). But this highlights one of the interesting contradictions at play here – the fact that the web has helped archive pop while simultaneously allowing it to wriggle free from historical and geographical moorings. It's not a simple case of rehashing the past – it's about picking and choosing things from across the decades that stir emotion and feeling in the listener or viewer.

The group Salem make a strange, sinister music that others have labelled "witch house", grouping them with acts including Balam Acab, Stalker and oOoOO (whose "Hearts" is surely one of the tracks of the year). Inspired by early rave and dream-pop, witch house also takes its cue from the "chopped and screwed" remix technique so prevalent in early 90s hip-hop. Listen to Salem's version of country classic "The End of the World" to hear them bring the song's sad message to the fore.

The ultra-hip Tri Angle label, which sprang from the blog 20 Jazz Funk Greats, is home to several of these acts. A recent EP (available for free download) saw their roster let loose on the back catalogue of troubled ex-pop performer Lindsay Lohan and was perhaps the ultimate example of these mainstream mutations.

"A lot of people are kind of laughing when they mention the Lindsay mix to me," says oOoOO (aka Christopher Dexter Greenspan). "It's like they want me to know they're in on the joke or something – but it wasn't my intention to poke fun at her or be ironic. For me, Lindsay's career is an expression of how really intense sensitivity, emotion, and imperfection have a way of pushing through even the most heavily managed media personas."

Maybe, in essence, this is what this current generation of artists is doing – digging beneath pop's shiny facade to unleash the damaged beauty within.